The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

Nature is rarely allowed to enter the sacred portals of civilized society.

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else.

What will remain of a civilization that reverences a man above all the poets because he can make a cheap automobile at $500 each?

A few suits of clothes, some money in the bank, and a new kind of fear constitute the main differences between the average American today and the hairy men with clubs who accompanied Attila to the city of Rome.

Civilization rests on two things: the discovery that fermentation produces alcohol, and the voluntary ability to inhibit defecation. And I put it to you, where would this splendid civilization be without both?

It seems to me the mark of a civilized society that certain privileges should be taken for granted such as education, health care and the safety to walk the streets.

There is precious little in civilization to appeal to a yeti.

The fate of civilization is like needlework. You can take it up and worry about it at odd moments.